BOSTON (CBS/AP) – President Obama spoke to a crowd at Dorchester’s TechBoston Academy Tuesday telling them he doesn’t want lawmakers to cut back on job-creating investments like education.

“There’s nothing responsible about cutting back on our investment in these young people,” said the President.

During his visit to Boston, which also included a fundraising dinner at the Museum of Fine Arts, President Obama issued a not-too-veiled warning at Republican budget cutters and characterized any reductions in money for education as irresponsible and harmful to the long-term health of the nation’s economy.

In his most vigorous defense yet of his education spending proposals, Obama conceded that after years of deficits, the government needed to embrace fiscal discipline. And in a restrained speech to Democratic donors, he cautioned the partisan crowd not to equate compromise with failure.

“Not everything is a fight, not everything has to be a battle to the death,” he later said to top-dollar contributors as they ate, surrounded by Renaissance paintings at MFA.

WBZ-TV’s Jim Armstrong reports.

The President was joined by philanthropist Melinda Gates in the latest stop on his month-long push for an education agenda aimed at garnering bipartisan support for more flexibility and accountability for teachers, and more innovative standards for students.

TechBoston Academy, a grades 6-12 pilot school within the Boston school district, opened in 2002 with money from a foundation headed by Gates and her husband, Bill Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft. The school represents the combined effort of government, businesses, philanthropists and communities. The school integrates technology in all its academic courses and relies on partnerships with a series of high-tech business partners, including Cisco Systems, Microsoft, IBM and Google.

In choosing TechBoston, the White House sought to showcase a school in a working-class neighborhood that had turned around its graduation rate thanks to new flexibility for its leaders and plenty of help from private foundations.

“Fixing our schools will cost some money,” Mr. Obama said. “Recruiting and rewarding the best teachers costs money. Making it possible for families to send their kids to college costs money. Making sure that some of the state of the art equipment all of you are working on … that costs money.”

Later in the day the fundraising dinner raised $1 million and cost a minimum $5,000 per seat. Dinner, a VIP reception and participation in a photo line with the president cost $30,800 per person or $50,000 per couple, according to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

At the museum, but before the dinner, the President got a chance to meet with members of the Boston Celtics.

Celtics co-owner and managing partner Stephen Pagliuca said afterward, “We were thrilled to visit with the President. He spoke about the Boston Celtics unselfish play and teamwork. It was inspiring for us to hear those words and we told the President we hope to see him in the White House in the fall after the NBA Finals.”

WBZ-TV’s Christina Hager reports.

The president landed at Logan Airport on Air Force One around 2:30 p.m. and left again around 7:30 p.m.

Obama shouldn’t be the lead story. He’s demonstrated HE can’t lead. Not with unemployment still hovering between 9-10%. Gas prices have doubled since he took office. Home foreclosures at record highs. The deficit tripled to $14 trillion and is still climbing. We’re still in Iraq and Afghanistan. GITMO prison is still open for business. He’s a failure by his own measure.

America’s education system is a joke despite spending record amounts of money per student. Money can’t seem to fix what’s wrong with our education system. But when we take the students out of the traditional system unions want to protect and put them in charter schools, they do better. Even Obama acknowledges it’s time to hold teachers accountable and to reward results, not just longevity in the job.

As long as the teachers are unionized and we allow full “collective bargaining” our schools will be second rate. Obama’s trip to Boston was 100% polical, with the primary goal has a fund raiser for all the Dumbocrats who the state. In the future let’s keep Obama in Washington for the nest few years, then send him either back to illinois or better yet Hawaii, I hope Deval stays in Israel.